Five Elements Through Five Senses: Fire (September September 18th to 28th)
Seeing Fire
I always feel like I need to be more aware and more respectful during my interaction with Fire. The same way I feel about many goddess who interact with this embodiment (like Oya or Lilith or Pele, etc). I always come around this one rather nervous or annoyed. I've always been so put off my all the new age pagan's who immediately identify themselves with Fire because it is the "Coolest" element. Which part of my own personal block with getting past the world and seeing fire itself.
The first day you sent these out a friend at work brought me a plate of freshly popped pop-corn and even though I don't eat much starch I was struck by the plate. With its fluffy white popped corn and unpopped kernels. Here was fire screamed some part of my brain. Tiny golden kernels that are nearly inedible and flavorless, which with heat/fire becomes suddenly completely transformed. Soft and fluffy, color changed to white. This is fire.
Transformer in the ways little else can be.
I watch my candles and wax chips burn or melt, turning solids into liquids. and it got my thinking on how it can change one elemental standing of something to the eye (and chemical composition). It can change solid into another solid (cooking and ash), solid into air (smoke), solid into liquid (candle wax).
I stared at the flame. This thing I have a healthy respect for, as it does have the ability to hurt me. And this is what we remember about fire first a lot of times. But then so does earth and air and water (all nature's destruction's have one or some). And yet in their natural, calm states Earth, Air and Water do not need to be watched.
Where Fire natural state is one of consumption. Something has to be consumes and sacrificed to this change, this burning, for it to remain burning. Always. No neutral, inactive state exists for fire. Always in action, doing, burning.
It's a very interesting way to start this all out.
Touching Fire
I feel the heat of fire in my life very often weather inside or outdoors.
Since the first exercise mentions candles, I should clarify that not counting my own personal magic things, I light six large Yankee jar candles everyday while in my house. I'm aware of the heat of the flames and the how wicks burn. The heat against my hand when I'm lighting, or my lips or bottom of my face when I'm blowing it out, or my fingers if I need to pick up the glass jar.
The heat which suffuses. The amount of heat coming off the air with the scent.
I have put out candles with my finger tips in ritual for, when the ritual or my group called for it. We've done it with licked finger tips or by clapping it out, but I'm never very comfortable with that. I will blow it out or use a snuffer. I'm not specific to which it has to be, and I don't believe it's insulting to fire or air to blow out candles.
The second big one is that I live in Texas. One of the many lovely furnaces in the south of the US. It's so very easy to walk outside and be aware of fire. The cloying warmth on skin when it's raining, of the dry sticky one when it's simply hot and summery and blue skied. The necessity of having to wear high spf sunscreen everywhere, lest I turn red before turning white again.
I love the heat of the sun though. Love to get in my car during the summer and early fall that is just as hot or hotter, and sit in there, letting the hot air soak into my skin. I will never live anywhere else and be content with it not being this warm in my life, as shown by my last year in Korea. I deeply love my heated season.
(And then thinking about the sun, got my thinking about the stars. Without fire all the twinkling lights which brighten my heart in the night would not be there either. Fire as a constant, untouched in its heat and yet it is there, effecting everything from comfort and whimsy and awe to astrology and astronomy related things.
Which was a late Seeing Fire thing, but it didn't arrive until I was doing this one, so it's tucked into here with the Sun)
I was also really aware of the touch of heat this week while cooking. The heat in my appliances (and light bulbs!) as well as the reddened rings of the burners on my stove. The waves it gives off, how longer heat lingers. Everything effected in little parts. There is so much fire awareness in me right now. How it touches my life and how I used it. How I like it or need it or why I rely on it.
I saw a lot more of Fire in my daily life because of this exercise.
Smelling Fire
The smell of fire is so extremely evocative to me. I grew up doing multiple spiritual, girl scout, and family camp-outs. I am truly, deeply in love with the scent of campfire left on a body and clothes, to the point when I was younger, I wouldn't wash for a day or two hoping the scent would linger.
I skipped my monthly drum circle last night, for all the stress some of you know has popped into my life this last week, but sent off my roommate to enjoy the festivities (not limited to his spinning fire poi during the night, too!). While driving to the grocery store this morning, the car was full of the post-burn scent of sulfur and smoke, trailing thin through the car. It's comforting, homey scent.
I cannot test the scent of fire in my home with my jar candles for the melting wax of the Yankee Jars is strongly whatever scent the wax is. But I found myself smelling the sooty-sulfery residue of the flame left behind on the jars during this week as well. Because even this is another piece, or perhaps echo, of fire.
There's an acrid scent to burning, both on a grill and a plain candle. Lighting matches and smelling them as they smoke rises. But then I catch myself wondering, is the smoke actually smelling fire itself, because smoke is a gas, released into air, so does that make it fire or air to me now. I find myself catching often now on what exactly it is to interact with each element and how closely they being to blur into every other element in places as well.
I skipped association testing as I wanted to try and stay as close to fire itself as I could in my choices of exercises this week, since it is the element I veer from the most. But I do have to say I found myself staring at the list, because one of my favorite scents for life is Dragon's Blood. I have it perfumes, incenses, resin/herb form, oils, soap. I have many of these. With their sharp, fiery, acrid scents that demand your full attention.
Interesting to find fire already so prevalent in my bedroom and stock cabinets.
Hearing Fire
Oh, sound of fire, I hear you so often.
The explosion of sound when a match catches light with chemical friction. The hiss of liquid of a burning plate. The way the sounds at a fire place change throughout. The way even candles tell if there is too much or too little wick. The low moan of banked coals and the high, loud crackle of a well fed, wildly consuming blaze. A sputtering taper. The near silent sigh when a candle goes out at the end of its wick.
There is so much in fire to mesmerized by, and remembering to close my eyes, shut out the distraction of the never-ending, ever-changing light show is hard. But I shut it out to listen close to other things now. I feel compelled to this sound, but the same as I spoke original. Respectful. Wary. Aware. Prepared.
I think I find myself at a lack of safety with fire. Which is an interesting thing to keep in mind. Even as a sound I am on guard for making sure it doesn't begin to sound somewhere it sound be.
I do sometimes think of certain types of music as fiery at times. Certain pieces of hard or chaotic classical which range broadly almost attacking ones sense. The Salsa and Tango, very sultry dance things with their hard blooded, heart-bounding, breath stealing, slow growing dance or a chase involved with them. Very Latin American pieces. Drums at a certain state of staccato.
Tasting Fire
I tried this exercise tonight with a dinner flavor with lime and chili.
Trying to eat spicy has been a challenge since coming back from a year living in South Korea. Over there you eat kimchi twice a day, in varying degrees of medium spice and highly spicy -- the likes of which all American kimchi does not come close to even emulating. After that, coming home has made even things I can taste spice in far less climactic to me.
I tried it as a soup for tonight's experiment which had chili powder or spice in it. It's hard to pay attention, sometimes, even being so mindful. The sensation of heat filling our mouth. The flash of awareness when its the back of your throat, or how it lingers in your throat, like a soft throb afterward, only ever so slowly fading away.
I've never been a big fan of spicy food. Previous to Korea because I couldn't take it. Post Korea because I just don't see the appeal. It's manageable now, but not exciting.
But thinking about this all made me come around to my favorite dessert: Banana's Foster, which is actually made, specifically because of the way it's all cooked in high fire, to melt the sugar and burn off the alcohol.
Fire has a lot to do with tastes of things (as well as more than half of most food preparation in one form or another). The smoking of meat. The fact we even actually have liquid spice bottles that emulate that same smoky taste of firing something.
I think I did a good job of moving through the exercise, and understanding it, but I don't feel like I had any breakthroughs with it.